


Lambs

by mellish



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Abusive Parents, Backstory, Character Study, Childhood, Circus, Gen, Nightmares, Trauma, sad past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-19
Updated: 2010-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellish/pseuds/mellish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They find each other in nowhere.  Doll's story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lambs

**Author's Note:**

> Written for: kohakutenshi; Characters: Doll; Prompt: Childhood; Any specifics: I don't think a lot was delved into so please go anywhere with this, but I would like to see speculation on exactly how she was disfigured. (I think they mentioned her parents did it.)
> 
> Warnings: Spoilers for the whole circus arc, violence, rape, child abuse.

Big Brother's good at making up stories. Big Brother makes them up when they're sitting in the pitch dark with their knees moving up and down like chittering rats because it's _cold_ ; she's running her hands up and down over her arms and it's not really doing much to help, but it's better than keeping still and feeling the great hollowness in her stomach, the throbbing over her left eye, the bruises on her arm from the man who pinched her after he caught her nicking apples. She ended up taking home a half-squashed one that he didn't want anymore. They all thanked her heartily for it, and took little mincing bites so it would last.

Bigger Brother pulls her closer and she lets him. He's huge and warmer than the air, though she knows he must be freezing too. Especially with that bald head of his. He puts his big hand on her shoulder and smiles at her. She pats his knee. Big Brother begins, because they've all been begging him to – "Once upon a time there was a tower. And in that tower there lived a beautiful princess –"

"Make it an ogre," Big Sister says. "An ugly ogre with, with a bad smell and eyes like – like fire."

Big Brother keeps quiet.

"Yeah," she adds, trying to make peace. "An ogre would be cool. For a change." Though secretly she enjoys hearing about the princess, and her tower, and the wizard-knight-prince that comes to save her. And the dragons, with their breaths of white-hot flame. And the feasting that follows.

Big Brother sighs. "You two," he says, in his funny voice, "Are not real, proper girls. Okay then. So there was a dungeon, an' it was guarded by an ugly ogre, that smelled like old fish an' horse dung, with eyes that were huge an' watery like toma – like beetles. In spring – but it wasn't spring then, it was summer, an' very hot."

She settles back to listen, grateful for the diversion. Her eyes are starting to close, but she keeps trying to follow the story, as the ogre comes to life before her, becomes life itself.

\---

She has a name. She just isn't sure which one it is. It, or Girl, or Bitch, or Goddamit-I-can't-stand-the-sight-of-you-get-the-hell-out-of-here. The last one is quite long, and so is used least often, to her relief. He hits her across the face with the back of his hand when he comes home from work, smelling of beer and whatever else is on the floor of the pub; there's a bruise on his face and she knows she's supposed to feel sorry for him, but that doesn't stop her from noticing pointed objects far too much when he's around. Most of the time she sticks to her corner, the darkest one in their house (if you can call it one) and keeps silent and tiny, the things she does best. Sometimes he still finds her and drags her backwards across the floor, using her long hair, or the edge of the oversized shirt he gave her for a dress that, since then, has become a size too small.

He hates it when she vomits. He hates it when she bleeds, but that doesn't stop him from doing it, anyway, moaning as he squeezes her arms about how her mother is a dirty whore and she's no better than the fish he hauls from the harbour every day, how this shitty hole stinks of rat piss, how he needs some lovin'. His hands slide under her shirt and he kisses the top of her head, feeling her flat chest, rigid with fear. "You're a girl, you have to be good for _something_ ," he groans, and then she can't think of it anymore, won't. It's all blackness, roughness, stench and her eyes squeezed tight, while she thinks of knives. Bombs. Something that can breathe fire, or something that will kill.

She doesn't want to be a girl anymore. She doesn't want to be.

\---

He starts a fire lighting up a cigarette near a bottle of paint thinner she'd been sniffing to keep from feeling hungry. The toothless man at the old shoes cart had given it to her for free, after she'd sat and listened to his stories for awhile. (The man had been looking at her arms the whole time, and she worried about that, but he didn't touch her. He didn't lay a finger on her.) The whole table catches fire, burning bright orange; he grabs at her with his flaming jacket sleeve while she screams and keeps on screaming. His glove closes over one side of her face, and the pain nearly kills her, but she wrenches away, kicking at him desperately and moving back. He lets go. She crawls out of the house, choking from the ash, not looking back at where the fire has spread over his chest, over all of him. She can't see it anyway. Her eyes are too full of tears.

\---

They find each other in nowhere, barely alive, dirty fingernails, damp hair, teeth nibbling at the same trash. Her face burns for days; the rain is almost a comfort. Somehow her sensations have turned to mud. She's so hungry she can't think; she hurts all over. She doesn't know how long it's been until someone moves beneath her and she finds her head resting on someone's lap. The hard bone of the knee which serves as her pillow jerks as her eyes flutter open. "She's awake," someone says. A hand brushes her hair back. She looks, with vague interest, at the stump resting on her shoulder.

"Don't," she begins, _touch me_ , she means to finish, but he already has, it doesn't mean anything. She starts crying instead, folding into herself and sobbing. Someone, whoever he is, moves so that she's curled up against him instead, bawling into his shoulder. She can feel his ribs through her shirt, a stillness that reassures. One hand curls into her hair. She cries until she is empty.

\---

"I don't like that name," she says, but oh she likes it. How she likes it. Better than Little Sister – better than You. Bitch. Little slimy thief. It embarrasses her, she can't bring herself to say it, but it's what they can call her by, it's what she calls herself in her head. _Doll. No, no, I don't want to be a girl_ , she thinks, desperately, clinging to something she isn't sure of. But the name is pretty. And it sticks. Father, when they come to know Father, before he becomes someone else entirely, sits her on his knee and nuzzles her forehead against his cheek. He calls her precious.

The first time he asked her to sit on his lap, fear had rocked through her whole body – but his eyes were gentle, his mouth a loving curve.

Big Sister had done the same before her, and Big Brother, too. This father is not like that man who would slap her against the floor and push hard against her hips; this father gives them sugared porridge for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, stew for dinner. He gives her a shirt and shorts because she will never admit she wants a dress. "Come on, precious dear, sit on Father's lap," Baron Gelwin repeats. She plants herself gingerly on his knee, and he rocks her into half-sleep, and she's home.

\---

Father goes strange one day after attending a dinner. He looks the same, but he isn't. Two weeks later, he declares that they are going to put up a circus. They get her into tightrope walking because having one bad eye, for some strange reason, gives her excellent balance. She manages it all the way across when the rope is eight feet off the ground – from that height, falling could mean a busted shoulder, a bruise. They raise it a foot each day. At the circus tent that Father builds, it hits her for the first time that a fall could mean dying – there _are_ nets. There's nothing to be afraid of. This is what she tells herself as she climbs the ladder. _I don't even have to hold my arms out_ , she thinks. _I'm going to make it all the way across._

Sometimes, she remembers that she does.

Sometimes, she remembers falling a little past the middle, her knees trembling too much, Bigger Brother (no wait, _Jumbo_ ) catching her in his arms. The impact makes him tumble onto the floor. Big Brother – Joker – looks up at the tightrope with a strange expression on his face, and says, "Yeah, that's pretty high up."

Both memories seem valid. She can't remember which one really is.

She _is_ certain she made it the second time. The third time, she falls and breaks two toes landing the wrong way. Beast wrinkles her brow with worry. She has a scrape on her shoulder from lion training that day – luck would have it that the lion only grazed her – but it evidently didn't bother her much. Doll bites back tears as the Doctor wedges wood between her toes, advising her to keep them straight. "And no wriggling," Beast adds, one hand squeezing her shoulder.

"Okay," Doll answers, and thinks about the floor rising up to meet her, again and again and again.

\---

She makes the rose-wig herself, folding the roses out of cloth so that they'll last. It is Joker who teaches her how to use a thread and needle, how to arrange them over the makeshift scalp where the flower appliqués sit rather dejectedly. He cuts the thread with his teeth, shows her how the daisy-chain isn't visible from above but looks nice at the bottom. His skeletal hand is deft with the needle. She watches it, bone white against the pink flowers, wondering what it feels like for him to have that hand again.

"Maybe you should stick some feathers in it," he advises. "An' if we find some ribbons you can wrap the ends around your neck, under your chin, so you don't haveta worry about it coming off. Yeah?"

She nods, and takes it from his lap to work in the rest of the flowers. Beast shares with her some feathers from her collection, and Dagger comes by with a string of beads that he thinks will make the headdress prettier. They do.

\---

This is no fairytale, but some days it will do. Even if Father is not the same – hasn't been, not since his limbs came off and he laughed too much and his hand struck her face when she asked, "What are you doing, why this?" – no, not since that dinner so many years ago, when he cut himself on some rose thorns and he thought she wasn't looking. They next day he beat them all black and blue. Sometimes it's okay, even if they bring back four children, six, eleven from the last city. Even if she knows their empty eyes mean something else. Even if the road is dusty and the coming winter is cold. She handles a knife as well as Joker does, and has not fallen from the tightrope in a long time. She wonders if guilt will suffice.

 _What are we to do_ , she thinks. Maybe she is the only one asking. Maybe she is the only one who still wants to ask, now. Out of a burning house, into the ogre's mouth. Now they're the ogre's teeth. Something about it is wrong, but she won't think it. None of them do.

Smile smells of – milk, something like tea – when she wraps her arms around him, feeling his fever, making it hers. _It is a good thing_ , she thinks, _that he has come to work for the circus. That means – that means we won't have to bring him_. He's warm and thin against her, bony for all his strange tenderness, soft and, somehow angry. She can't quite place why. What hardships has he known, what damaged his eye, did it hurt the way hers did? He is a mystery as much as he is awful at circus work, at cutting potatoes. She doesn't know why she feels sad when she thinks of him.

He makes a snuffling sound against his pillow. She decides to sleep.

In her dreams there are lambs roaming, laughter from out of nowhere. Sky the color of fire. Father with no skin from his elbows and knees, body bent over, pressed against a boy who looks like Smile, saying incomprehensible things. She is a princess in a tower with half her face hidden. She is a sharp point in the ogre's gums. This is no fairytale, she tells herself, as the floor comes up to meet her.


End file.
